Day 5 My keyboard is still not fixed. My friend, the social media expert for my writing group, showed me on her keyboard what to change. The problem is, my keyboard doesn‘t look at all like hers. Hers is probably newer. We‘re great believers here that if something is broken you only replace it if it can‘t be fixed. Well, knickers to that! I may just buy a new keyboard to save my frayed nerves. However, my son did figure out somehow that if I press shift and 6 I get a ? Ta-da! So I‘m getting a badge at least from all this (insert expressive word here) bother – Thank you, Ben, for helping me with my noveling 🙂 Now how do I fix the need to press Ctrl plus the quotation key and press it twice to get a ‘ ? Forget it -I‘m buying a new keyboard! And my novel is taking on a life of its own. It keeps changing what I wrote in the outline. I‘m not sure it‘s flowing right and I‘m highlighting things that may need revision later. I‘ve come to realize I need to observe life more. Plodding on. Total word count with all this messing around – only 6152 – way behind. Looks like I‘ll be working late nights and most of Saturday. Plod on beautiful Plotters and Pantsers! 🙂
Day 3 Ok, here comes the first challenge! I was working away nicely this evening – trying to catch up on my word count and telling my inner-editor where to go – when my cat sat on my laptop. She has a place on top of a set of drawers beside me, with a comfy blanket because she likes to be near me when I write. J She`ll walk across the keyboard once in a while vying for attention, which I gladly give. Occasionally, she`ll try to lie over my shoulder with her butt on the keyboard because I`m not giving her my undivided attention. She did this tonight and now my keyboard is switching my question marks to a French É – see, I just typed a question mark! My son told me it`s an alternate function of that special key, but he doesn`t know how to fix it. So I had to continue typing away without question marks until I can ask my IT son-in-law in the morning! Silly kitty. Anyway, now I`m beat, so I`ll pass my 5,000 mark tomorrow (only 746 words to go). Take away from my experience todayÉ (argh!), pet the kitty before I start work then move my laptop to the sun room! See you tomorrow!
PS – When I transferred my blog from Word to WordPress I tried my ? key and – as you can see – it worked! Crazy things computers.
NaNoWriMo Daily Notes on Progress – or lack thereof!
NaNoWriMo Day 1
So this is my first attempt at NaNoWriMo. I decided to blog about the experience so you can make an educated decision if you’re thinking about doing it next year. And no – I don’t use a typewriter, but I liked the image and it was free. Here goes:
Day 1 It had to start on a Sunday, didn’t it?! I had decided to take Sundays off so I could go to church and visit family who I wouldn’t see otherwise because they work full-time. So here I was gearing up for the big event – my first NaNoWriMo – and I wasn’t even going to write on day 1! Fortunately, it was Daylight Savings Time and we turned the clocks back an hour, but not till 2am. So – aspiring to be a fringe fiction novelist – I figured out that the time between midnight on the Saturday and 2am on the Sunday, when the time officially changed, was no-woman’s land and up for grabs. I grabbed it and wrote furiously for two hours. I had to tell my inner-editor to pipe down several times, but I did manage 633 words – Wahoo!!! I need to catch up a bit tomorrow, on writing and sleeping, but writing a little more for six days should keep me on track. Fiction is a lot harder than Faction. (Oh dear, I seem to be losing the ability to find the right words. Bedtime).
Day 2 I started late because my son had a craving for French toast with cheese – a delicacy he came up with while at a restaurant yesterday. The chef wouldn’t cook one for him so he’d been wanting one ever since. Two French toasts with cheese later I set to writing. I already had 633 written from the Twilight Zone time of Saturday night, so I was feeling confident. “Just write away – don’t edit!” is what we’re told. Just get the 50,000 words written in abandon. Edit January and February. Ok by me, but sooooo difficult to do once you’re a writer. I also had to take time out to do my gardening responsibilities which I had procrastinated. So, with 15mins to spare before dinner had to go in the oven, I finished my word count for the day! Sweet bliss. Of course, I have no idea what I’m writing next, just a rough outline of start-middle-end. So I took some time tonight to research names for my antagonist. Yes, I’m learning all the big writing words so I know what people in the forums are talking about. See you tomorrow!
As an author and Christian Life Coach, I’m often asked about how to get started with a writing career. Here’s a mini-course on just that – how to get started on the writing path. There are lots of coaching tips and I’ve included worksheets to help you through those all-important first stages of decision making and planning, plus a guide to help equip you with attainable goals for moving forward in your new career. This course is for anyone thinking about changing their profession or seeking a solid basis to grow their writing.
Is God calling you to write for Him?
Do you feel compelled by God to write?
Does anyone say your words have impacted or inspired them?
Has anyone in professional writing circles said your work is good?
Have you ever dreamed of writing Devotionals or Christian Romance novels?
If your answer to any of those questions is “yes,” —
Congratulations – You just might be a writer!
As an author and Christian Life Coach, I’m often asked how to start a writing career. Here’s a workbook to help you with that. It has a questionnaire about how to get started on the writing path.
There are lots of coaching tips, and I’ve included worksheets to help you through those all-important first stages of decision-making and planning, plus a guide to help equip you with attainable goals for moving forward in your new career. The workbook is for anyone thinking about changing their profession or seeking a solid base to grow their writing.
Your Write Voice for His Kingdom is available from Amazon as a print book and Etsy as an instant download.
Writing for God – a beginner’s guide.
If God is calling you to write for Him, there’s no better partnership.
You are His masterpiece, Blessed one.
Til next time, know you are loved by the One who made you in His image.
I thought I would spend the entire winter improving my social media and using it to market my books. Then I’d sell a lot of books and become successful, right? It turns out that all this social media takes a lot of time and drags me away from what I really want to do – write! How can I become a successful author if I don’t have time to write any books? It’s like a giant cake sitting on my laptop, and – though I like cake once in a while – I couldn’t eat a whole one without being, well – you know!
What do I get from all this social media stuff anyway? As time-consuming as it may be, I’ve realized through it all that I have in fact gained something. I’ve gained an online writing community. I’ve gained friends and colleagues along the way and followed mentors. So that’s what this blog is all about. Success doesn’t come overnight – for most of us anyway. We need to take it one bite at a time, savour the morsels of small successes along the way, and share a piece of the cake with someone every day. The task isn’t as daunting that way. Let me explain…
Each day, if I follow my writing schedule, I will have worked on one of the following:
My blog is where you’re at now. You can see what I’ve written in my past posts and you can follow me if you like. You can also follow my Facebook page and Pinterest boards. All of these social media sites are an interest/hobby and I can share a piece of my cake there without it taking a lot of time. I’m doing a small piece of marketing while having fun. It doesn’t seem like much effort or need to take up too much time (although do set your timer for an allotted amount of time if you tend to get carried away!). Occasionally someone will like what I’ve posted/pinned and buy one of my books because of their interest in what I’ve shared.
If you’re a writer – share a sentence from the novel you’re writing (no spoilers!) or an excerpt from an ebook you just published. How about pinning a picture that inspired part of your book? Or make a 30 second YouTube video of you reading part of your published book, as a teaser.
If you’re an artist, share a part of your sketch, or the colour scheme of your latest design.
Remember to keep it about your work – not what you had for lunch. (Unless you’re a blogger or author of recipes). Whatever your work is, that’s your focus. Each thing you share with others becomes part of your collection. Your collection becomes who you are as an author.
Even one minute each day to pin or post something will be 30+ things you’ve shared at the end of the month.
Turn each one into a couple of paragraphs and that equals a 30 page ebook!
10 ebooks becomes a 300 page novel!
See how that works? –
Piece of cake!
Lynne
Artist’s drawing of a gran (me) eating cake with her cat, by Crafyjoe on Free Digital Images
Lynne Collier 